


The Callister Coping

by 50s_housewife_with_a_dark_secret



Series: Space Fleet: Infinity [2]
Category: Black Mirror, Black Mirror: The U.S.S. Callister
Genre: BAMF Nanette, BAMF Walton, Cognitive Dissonance, Dissociation, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, IN SPACE!, Infinity, Nanette Cole has issues, Outer Space, Past Relationship(s), Poor Walton, Reunited and It Feels So Good, SNAFU, Space Opera, Spoilers, Squabbling, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, poor Nanette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-04-08 01:15:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14093802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/50s_housewife_with_a_dark_secret/pseuds/50s_housewife_with_a_dark_secret
Summary: The Crew of the U.S.S. Callister continually struggles to come to terms with their situation.





	1. Reality

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for: Unhealthy coping mechanisms. Specifically, Kabir Dudani views himself as "fake" (which gives him further severe, if latent, self-image issues), obsessively stalks the other, outside-world Dudani, and intentionally dissociates, believing that it will give him a better connection with reality.

Kabir is happy for Walton, he really is, he just doesn't think it's as big a deal as everyone is making it out to be. A fake person got saved from a fake situation in a fake universe. Kabir enjoys a good story, but the others are getting lost in this world. Nothing here is real. Kabir spends his time, if not more productively, then less foolishly, at least. He heads back to his room as soon as the commotion is over and pulls out a personal consul. With a few keystrokes, he can see what the real Kabir is doing on his phone back home. He looks over the screen. He could mess with the real Kabir's life but he doesn't need to do that. He may be a program of sorts but he's no virus. He just watches. There are a few tabs open. 

He feels a stab of guilt in the nonexistent "place" where pixels display his "gut". He shouldn't be spying on Real-Kabir. Then again, its not like anyone will ever see Real-Kabir's information. Fake-Kabir isn't selling it or distributing it. Absolutely no one can see Real-Kabir's tabs but Real-Kabir himself. If a tree falls in the woods, with no people or animals around to hear it, it makes no sound. Kabir has debated this with himself over the years, but he's always come to the same conclusion on that little puzzle. 

What's going on at home? 

Well, lets see, Real-Kabir's screensaver is a pretty girl. It's that actress! Whatshername. Huh, maybe he's a fan now. 

Real-Kabir also appears to be designing an AI in his freetime. He's named the AI "quirky" in his files. 

Fake-Kabir smiles and looks over Real-Kabir's other files. Apparently he's taken some selfies recently. He went out for drinks with Nate and Valdack and there are pictures of them grinning at the camera. 

Kabir smiles. 

He checks out Real-Kabir's webcam at work. Real-Kabir is in the zone. He's leaning over his computer screen and whispering to himself occasionally "and just move this over here". He's coding and he's completely immersed in it. Kabir takes a look at what's on the screen. He sees the problem Real-Kabir is missing. 

He could fix it for Real-Kabir. He could...but why? He only wants to observe, really. He only wants to watch. He isn't a part of the real world and he won't lie to himself about that. 


	2. Shania's Child

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Death, accidental pregnancy, discussion of a possible abortion (sort of), the forcible separation of a child and father.

Nanette looks up from the screen. "My best friend just died." Her voice is blank. 

"Shit." Walton looks worried. "Do you want me to take the wheel for a while?"

"Um..." Nanette shakes her head. "No. I'm...I'm good." She frowns a little but her voice is honest. 

Shania nods and goes back to her panel of largely meaningless buttons, glancing up now and again to double-check that Nanette is okay. 

"That's terrible news, Ca-uh-Nanette, let us know if there's anything we can do." 

"Thank you, Nate. I will." 

Why isn't she crying? Nanette wonders. She should be crying. Right?

~~~

Walton's hands were shaking. He entered the code into the keypad. The line rang. Once. Twice. He should give up. Three times. 

"Hello?" he watched his own face appear on the screen. It was surreal

"Hey, so...there's some stuff you should probably know about Daly."

The other  Walton smiled "I can see that." 

~~~

Shania was late. How the fuck was she late in a perfect simulation? She did a quick google. Oh. Well that was going to be a problem. 

~~~ 

 "Shania?"

Shania didn't look up. 

"Shan?" Nanette asked, louder

"Hmmm?" Shania asked before fully realizing someone was talking "Oh! uh...What?"

"I think something's wrong with me." Nanette whispered.

"Wrong?" 

"My best friend died the other day."

"Oh that'd put anyone out, Nan"

"No. That's the problem."

"What is?"

"I don't care. I think I'm turning into a sociopath or something, Shania." 

"You're not turning into a sociopath."

"How do you _know_?" Nanette insisted. "What if I end up like Daly?"

"Because Daly acted like a little boy. You aren't a kid." 

"That's not an answer. God, even you don't feel real anymore."

Shania laughed uneasily "You can say that again."

"Shania...what's happening to me?"

Shania shrugged "Truama?"

Nanette hunched in on herself and pulled her feet up on the chair. "Yeah. Probably." 

"Nanette?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm pregnant."

Nanette smiled sadly. "I wish you could meet the baby." She looked like she was going to cry.

"No." Shania said. "Not out there. In here. This me. I looked it up. Players can generate NPC's...Nate and I..."

"Oh...shit." Nanette laughed "I'm sorry, I'm sorry I just can't believe this is our life now."

Shania laughed. "Yeah pretty crazy innit?" 

"Um...wow...so...what're we gonna do?"

"Delete it?" Shania shrugged.

"Wild." 

"You're not a sociopath, Nanette."

"I know." 

~~~

"Please, If I could just talk to him. He's my son."

"No. He's my son. You're just the off-brand imitation. Goodbye. Don't make me call the cyber police on you." 

The phone went dead.

Walton screamed into his pillow. 


	3. Ship on The Edge of Infinity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Depression, Obsessive Thinking, Addiction, Self-harm

Elena stares out into space from a bay window. She feels nothing. No rage. No pain. She is empty and the world is gone, and she is in this black void, marked only by stars that aren't real. She punches the bay. For a second, she feels an angry warmth in her knuckles but it fades as quickly as the impact. She hits the bay again. Again. Her knuckles are red now. Not cut or scraped just reddening. Almost as if there was blood there. Excellent rendering. Very good. No wonder Nanette is so full of herself, if she helped code this. Again. There. Again. If she could just hold onto feeling for a whole second. The feeling fades as soon as its there. Maybe she's just imagining it. She hits again. There. Then nothing. Nothing. Nothing. If someone saw here they would think she was furious and frustrated. They would see her ponytail falling apart and her strikes and her bruised fists and think she was raging and alive. There's an American expression Valdack used to use. "Fake it 'til you make it." It has a sound to it. So she bites down on her fist and screams like she's angry or something. The yell scratches up and claws it's way out of her throat like a rodent with curved, hooking claws. She really doesn't give a...her mind looks for a good curse to use but she just hasn't got that kind of energy to waste on such a stupid thought. She leans back into the bay window and closes her eyes. She falls asleep.

~~~ 

Kabir listens to the phone ring. Once. Twice. "Hello?" A voice asks. His voice. The real him. He listens to himself. "Hello?" The phone goes dead. He dials the number again. Real-Kabir doesn't pick up. He tries again. No luck. Again. Nothing. Again. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. 

~~~

Walton downs another drink. There still isn't much else to do, even now that they've escaped. Nothing that means anything. His kid is gone. Forever. Thank god. And what response is there to that but to drink? It's what he's used to by now. It's how he survived before. It'll be how he survives now. It doesn't matter. Besides, if he stops drinking to long he'll have a pretty awful hangover. Each drink he has only makes the inevitable looming crash worse. He grabs a bottle and drags it to his room. This is what is left of James Walton. The rest has burned away. 


	4. The Truth About Violence Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Crew of the Callister discovers a boy using Infinity to practice and steel himself for a real-life terrorist attack

The planet isn't a majorly popular one, but it isn't too far off the beaten tack either. Most of the continent here is taken up by a huge co-operative based player city. The ship is resting in a docking area and Nanette is there, sleeping around the clock to make up for the exhaustion of being the de-facto captain. Walton has headed out with his share of the crews trading goods left over after basic survival needs. He knows logically he doesn't really need another bottle of weird sci-fi alcohol but he definitely likes it and it's a reason to get out of bed. He makes his way to a seedier part of the port and heads into an impressively rendered player-built liquor store complete with flickering sign and generally disreputable vibe. He's staring at a shelf of weird fictional alien wines when the shot goes off. Glass shatters. Curses go up around the store. He grabs a bottle off of the shelf, (If things get any worse he's gonna need this,) and hides behind a tall display. Through a tower of bottles he can see a gang of young players stalking through the store. They're pale. All of them are teenagers or at most in their early twenties. Not men yet. 

"Get to the middle of the floor and get down on your knees. Hands behind your head!" Yells a kid standing in the doorway. He's wearing a t-shirt and jeans. He could have been going anywhere. Doing anything. And now Walton might die before he even gets to drink his weird alien wine. Fucking gamers. 


	5. The Truth About Violence Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: reference to rape/a character makes a rape joke, sexualization of a simulated dead woman,

A spray of bullets runs over the floor and the boys high five and call out cheerful slurs to eachother and their victims on the ground. In the chaos, Walton crams himself into the freezer and breaks in the shelves to get to the back room. The sound of gunshots rings around him. He huddles down pops open the bottle. His hands are shaking. Christ he's like his goddamn character. Maybe all those years of playing a coward have morphed him. Footsteps fall outside his freezing bubble of safety. Words filter in. There are no more screams just chuckles and jokes and snatches of words blurred by the running stream of alcohol into his blood: 

"Oh man check out the tits on this one!"

Walton holds perfectly still.

"Forget the tits check out the loot!"

It's so cold in here. 

"Duuude! Check out the shot I made."

"Shut up, bitch! I'm trying to talk! I'll fucking rape you." 

Giggling

Laughter

"Man this is gonna be so much better in real life."

"check it out"

More laughter.

Walton fades in and out of reality. When he comes back to himself, it's impossible to say how long there has been quiet here. At least a minute. Probably an hour. A day wouldn't be a stretch. 

He's vomited all over his clothes.

It's so cold in here. 

He doesn't want to move. 

He forces himself to stand and opens the door with numb, shaking fingers.

Most of the bodies are piled up to the side of the room but a few are scattered over the floor. He steps over them. They look real. He tries to remember that they were just stupid people playing a stupid game. Probably. Probably no one like him. 


	6. The Truth About Violence Part 3

Walton stumbled numbly back onto the ship. "Nanette! Nanette wake up!" He pounded on her door. She sat up and it slid open. 

"What the fuck Walton?" 

"Nanette, there was a shootout. I overheard these kids talking. I think--"

"A shootout? Shit! Are you alright."

"Yes I'm fine but Nanette, I think some kids are planning a shooting." 

"Damn."

"Nanette, we have to do something."

Nanette took a deep breath. "Okay. We'll call back the others, get a plan together. Do you know where the shooters are now?"

"Yeah that's the other bad news."

"Fuck. Okay. We'll figure this out."

 


	7. The Truth About Violence Part 4

It wasn't so much the actual plan they were practicing. They knew how to shoot, and they had rehearsed at the actual location. No, this was about the act itself. It was about the way the graphics perfectly rendered blood splatter, all those facial tics that gave away fear, things like that. Of the six of them, only two were true sociopaths after a traditional definition, and they had been willing to wait, with a surprising consideration for the others, to steel themselves over the past few weeks to take lives. It was for this reason, that they used the in-game gun-stash however they felt like using it, despite the fact that they only had a fraction of these weapons in real life. Part of practicing, after all, was being able to get really excited, find the joy in stockpiling weapon after weapon. The sociopaths, especially, had seemed to find this period of collecting and filing away a treasure trove of in-game weapons a rewarding way to spend a few weeks. The ring leader, and one of the two sociopaths, got to choose his gun first, before every outing, and he enjoyed ones that got him bigger, gorier blood smatterings on the walls. He was aware that he would most likely only get to do this in real life once, so he was content to spend a few weeks really relishing the fantasy. Building up to it. The way Christmas had been when he was little, before the world became godless all around him, leaving him behind. The next practice was tomorrow, on another "planet", and they were just packing up everything onto their ship, The Killer, before making their way off of this computer-rendered garbage pile of a planet. It was better than earth, but not by much. They would head one planet over, and they would practice, one more time, before the Big Day. 


	8. The Truth About Violence Part 5

"Okay...I think...I might have a plan."

"Wait really?" 

"yeah...Walton...you remember what they looked like, right? Their voices?"

"I think so." 

"Okay...so what I think we need to do is...access that...this is all coding, even us so...if we can get your memories we should be able to send them anonymously to the cyberpolice"

"Alright so what are we waiting for?" Walton asked.

"Look it's...I'll...It's dangerous. I could...I could end up messing up some stuff...I don't really...the coding for your brain is so complicated if I mess it up..."

"Hey." his voice was comforting and soft "What've I got to live for anyway?" 

She laughed "Fair enough." 

In the end, it was sort of anticlimactic. The police never contacted them back, but the headlines talked about the anonymous tip. It wasn't an adventure. It was just another reminder that the real action was in another world. 


End file.
